O_O

It's unusual that I can remember a dream so well. I sort of forgot the ending though.

Myself and several friends who I can't remember enough to identify were heading into school for a flute lesson. Mr. Pugh was to instruct us. We were there first, however, so my friends decided to play a few pranks on him. I didn't want to take part, but they managed to force me into it. We disabled the doorbell, glued the lock closed, and took off the street number of the place we were being taught (which was no longer school). The street number was the Ace of Spades.

He arrived shortly after that, and didn't seem to have been phased by our tricks at all. And he was suddenly hardcore. School was over, so he was able to dress how he wanted - he had his hair cut almost to the point of balding, had no shirt, and a kilt with knives strapped to it on. He looked like some sort of Scottish warrior. He then began out instruction. It was 1 on 1, so while my friend(s)? were being instructed, I was free tp explore the complex. It seemed that he'd placed a few traps of his own. Floating sniper rifles that fired automatically when they saw me (I was flying around), traps from which I would never be able to escape if I let them have me. I then saw a group of people - perhaps 50, in the distance. I somehow knew that they were the same as Mr Pugh. I went back inside. Mr. Pugh was gone, the class (for now there were many of us) was on a break. That's when strange things started happening. A cavity formed within one of the walls, and tentacles burst forth. We had to act as a hivemind in order to pull them from the hole and kill them. Once they were all dead, I examined t hem. One of the tentacles was actually a pair of headphones - iPhone headphones. I decided that I would use them, since mine were getting a little worn in a few places. However, to my creeping horror, I discovered that these headphones had the exact same signs of wear. I pulled my own headphones out - they were identical in every way, to the tiniest details. They were just similar - they were the same. Something very strange was going on. I left the complex, then. I went home, and my parents immediately knew something was wrong. I appeared traumatized. I explained what had happened, and while concerned, they offered effectively no help. I returned the complex to face Mr. Pugh. This time, for some reason, I had a great number of people with me. We made up about 50. I tried logging onto the school's portal to somehow contact Mr. Pugh, but it was now some sort of Mission interface. I turned it off. Our group was waiting in a shipping container, and it was very cramped. I had one of the sniper rifles that was floating in the air as a trap, and when I saw that group of strange people in the distance again, I knew simultaneously that they were like Mr. Pugh, and that they weren't human. So I brought the rifle to bear and began to attack. Once I fired the first shot, they all began to walk towards the shipping container. I managed to kill perhaps 40 of them. One, I somehow knew it was their commander, refused to die. I put bullet after bullet into his head, but he seemed immortal. He lifted the container with one hand, and shook it out. He laughed, saying something about how many "normal people" had actually come to THEM today. One of his cohorts laughed, saying "A normal person is good too." I was on the edge of the pile of people that he had created. They both walked off, soon to return, and I got up to escape. I tried logging in to the school's portal, but I found that it had been replaced by some kind of mission interface, with Mr. Pugh featuring as some kind of adversary. I went to return to the group of people, but found everyone had been killed, brutally. Including myself, for I was no longer seemingly in my body. The commander was there, and he offered me a place amongst them, through an interface that looked suspiciously like a DS emulator. It seemed that they were an organization, somewhere between Shibuya's reapers and Organization XIII, that aimed to keep the human population of that city down. I joined them, for I had no other way to get my revenge on Mr. Pugh for killing all those people I was with. As part of my missions, I had to collect hearts from people - only certain people though, people the reapers refered to as "Normal People". I did my task, and tried to ignore the sounds of screaming that I brought from the "normal people" before they died and released their hearts. My headphones grew more and more worn as time went on, and still they didn't pair me with Mr. Pugh. I had begun to lose hope when I woke up.

しょうたい - Natural Shape, One's True Colours, Senses

[10/11/09 13:22:26 ] Ambivalence (8) : i wonder if she's synaesthetic...
[10/11/09 13:22:29 ] Ambivalence (8) : forgot how to spell OTL
[10/11/09 13:22:36 ] Ambivalence (8) : "For color: Monday is yellow, Tuesday is red, Wednesday is blue, Thursday is green, Friday is gold, Saturday is brown, and Sunday is white."
[10/11/09 13:23:21 ] Mptp (st) : huh?
[10/11/09 13:23:49 ] Ambivalence (8) : err
[10/11/09 13:23:54 ] Ambivalence (8) : associates colours with stuff
[10/11/09 13:24:04 ] Ambivalence (8) : like
[10/11/09 13:24:09 ] Ambivalence (8) : 'ohai, monday is a yellow day'
[10/11/09 13:24:14 ] Ambivalence (8) : and bob is a purple name
[10/11/09 13:24:15 ] Ambivalence (8) : etc
[10/11/09 13:24:28 ] Mptp (st) : I see
[10/11/09 13:24:30 ] Mptp (st) : wait
[10/11/09 13:24:33 ] Mptp (st) : that's a condition?
[10/11/09 13:24:37 ] Mptp (st) : I thought everyone did that O_O
[10/11/09 13:24:38 ] Ambivalence (8) : errr
[10/11/09 13:24:42 ] Ambivalence (8) : ........... /swt
[10/11/09 13:24:46 ] Mptp (st) : ........//swt

Well today was an interesting day.

Turns out, I'm a grapheme-colour synesthist - an associator.
A synethist is one who experiences involuntary sensory responses to certain triggers.

In my case, letters, numbers, names and people have, in my mind, an inherent, and very specific colour. I thought that everyone experienced this, since it seemed so natural to me, but it turns out that that's not the case.

I remember, about 3 years ago, I mentioned to several of my friends that I could see the colour of people's "auras" - that was me misinterpreting the fact that I was simply involuntarily seeing the colour which my mind linked with their personality.

It might be worth mentioning that someone's name and their colour aren't necessarily the same thing. For example, I told Alden that his name "Alden" is pale yellow with a little bit of blue - perhaps a very pale cyan. But his personality is perhaps silver and navy.

Also, the colour of a name seems to have some relation to the colours of the letters it is made up of. A is very, very pale yellow, almost white. L is a pale green. D is a more browny-yellow colour, but not too dark. E is greeny-yellow, and N is a dark, rich green. The name of Alden is, as I said, very pale yellow with a little bit of blue - so a pale, yellowish cyan.

So there you go - rather interesting. Not useful in any way, but still quite interesting.

たんごへん

I just remembered something I used to think of when I was young - perhaps 8 or 9.
I used to think of my vocabulary as a collection. As I learned new words, my collection expanded. I think I used to seek a sense of completion - a point where I knew enough words and I would be satisfied.

It used to be really fun, learning new words.

まだまだゆめ

My family and I were going on a holiday to a large city, I believe in London. The small motel we arrived in was quite poor, and we arrived at night. I stepped over a sleeping child and had some difficulty finding our room, which was also small. I took a single bed, with my sisters doing the same and my parents taking a double bed in the corner. The view from my window was poor, as it looked onto the outskirts of the city, but I could see a Lamborghini, so I wasn’t entirely put-out. A bit later, the rest of my family went out, and I noticed that above our room, somehow within earshot, were two engineers trying to orient what looked like a large pair of dice, suspended by steel cables. They were arguing about how they needed someone just under 18. After listening for a while, I called up to them that I was 17 and 4 months. Eager, they called me up. My clothes got very dusty on the walk up the stairs, and I finally helped them – they identified a problem and thanked me for my time. They wanted to eat me though, so I left in a hurry. There were people being trained in the art of engineering in a clean classroom in an adjescant room to their worksite, in contrast to the noisy, dusty site that I was in. I left and went back down to my room. I asked at reception if they had any Zippo lighters to buy, but they did not.
Somehow, I found myself needing to teach my cadets something about Japanese. They were being particularly unruly, so I was able to equip a laser beam that took about 5 seconds to charge under direct sunlight, and could not charge anywhere else. The beam lasted long enough to kill one cadet, and main another, if only aimed at one at a time. I began vaporising the more unruly cadets, and the rest mostly fell into place. I was watching Ms. Asai teach her lesson, and when she was finished, I began to teach my own. It went poorly however, and I was not in direct sunlight, so I could not use my laser.
Then the dream sort of fizzled out, and I woke up.

へんゆめ

I wrote this the day after I had it, so it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. *shrugs*

We were at Cadet Camp.
I was at HQ, as I normally am, when one of my senior rank suddenly jumped up and brandished a knife. Everyone else thought it was a joke, but only I could see his eyes – they were solid black. The irises, whites, pupils, everything. He went at one of the guys around the fire, and I knew that he meant to kill him. I managed to grab his knife arm and make him drop the knife, but he began to attack me with his bare hands. Fueled by adrenaline, I finally managed to lock his arms behind his back. Silent, but furious and deadly, he fought me. I could think of nothing to do to calm him down – he wasn’t acting himself. Finally, in desperation, I spoke some words softly but forcefully to him – words that I didn’t know the meaning of, and he returned to normal. He relaxed in my arms, and was confused – he had no recollection of what had happened. After a bit of questioning, I discovered that he had been bitten by a very unusual spider. We soon learned that there was a nest of these spiders nearby. I called all of the cadets up onto the road using a fire drill – I needed them to hurry, and it was an emergency. I had one of the spiders dead in my hand, I asked if anyone had seen a spider like it. A few hands went up. One cadet said that he had been bitten by a spider like that. The cadets were wondering what was going on, and beginning to think that it was a waste of time. I had the cadet who had been bitten come up to the front. I had him turn around, with his back to me, and I locked his arms, like I had done for the first rank who had been affected. At first, everyone was confused, including the cadet who I grabbed, but he, after several seconds, grew silent, and the cadets watched, horrified, as his eyes turned black and he began to violently fight my grip. I told the cadets, as he struggled in my arms, what was happening, and finally spoke the words which I somehow could recite at will, but didn’t know myself what they were. I couldn’t have recounted them then, and I couldn’t recount them now. After the fuss had died down, four other cadets came up and said that they had been bitten. I had my rank bind them in much the same way I had, and we waited for them to turn. Before long, they did, and I spoke the words.
Suddenly, we saw a black carpet coming towards us from over the crest of a nearby hill. It was the spiders, millions of them. The staff were nowhere to be found. There were screams coming from the campsite, and I knew, somehow, that someone who was killed by an infected person would become infected themselves. I knew that it was too late for the platoon, and I took those who were still safe into the bus and began to drive it away.
The spiders were faster, however, and they began to catch up. They seeped in through the walls. I had someone else drive as I fought the ones who I had saved as they were bitten. But as I saved one, he would be bitten by three more of the spiders. Somehow, they were avoiding me. I looked back, and the one who I had driving – my best friend on the camp, had been bitten too, and he was advancing upon me with a knife. There was no one driving, and the bus careened over the side of a cliff. As it tumbled through the air, I despaired, for everyone on the camp was lost, and I was doomed to die by the hands of those I had attempted to save. And, as the bus reached the apex of its flight, and began to head towards the ground, I awoke.

ZEN

Jeez.
I really don't know what to do with myself.
First a games designer, then an electrical engineer, and now a graphics designer.
I mean, I'd already planned on doing web-design in my spare time, but I've been reading, much like how I was reading about electronics.

From years 0-15 of my life, I knew nothing.
Year 16, I knew next to nothing.
Year 16.5, I knew enough to know what it is that I knew a little about.
Year 16.6, I knew enough to think that I knew something.
Year 17, I knew enough to think that I knew lots.
Year 17.137, I know enough to realise that I don't know anything at all, and it makes me really excited. I want to learn stuff, learn more, get inspiration, create, revise, rethink, redo, scrunch up, smooth out, rip out, go away, learn something else, get an idea, decide that it sucks, but spend an hour working on it anyway. But I don't have time, right now, since I'm busy with school.

But now I don't know what I want to do. I don't think I'll do graphics design at uni - I have no intention of being anything other than a freelance designer, and I don't need a fancy degree for that.

The question is now do I want to become an electrical engineer? I've lost interest in games design, and I'm not too sure about this electronics stuff. I think it's more of a hobby.

So...what? Do I just skip uni and spend four years developing my graphics skills, then? What happens in 10 years time when computers can generate beautiful, functional designs in seconds, and humans become redundant?
In fact, how do I know that anything I do won't become like that in a decade or two? We live in exponential times, and I get the feeling that whatever we do now will seem ineffectual in about a decade, once we're really established in our chosen industries. So, should we just pretend like that isn't going to happen, but be ready for it when it does? Get prepared to stop writing code, and start writing poetry, or will machines be able to do that. Will a piece of software be developed that can analyse every piece of music ever written, and write a complete Symphony in the style of Beethoven, or create a heavy metal song based on Rachmaninoff's piano concertos?
I have a nasty feeling that everything is going to go pear-shaped in the future. How are we to know how much automation is too much? How long until we become completely unnecessary?

Hehe...I went off topic. My blog, my topics.

Anyway, I guess my immediate concern is trying to balance schoolwork and web design. I need to get this site done by November, and I work sloooow.


Oh, and I discovered what a useful resource twitter is.

あがない - Atonement, Compensation

Did I say 'permanent'?
It's very strange. I came here to post in my own blog, but I was temporarily sidetracked and read Yang's blog first. I then had a look at my own blog. It occurred to me that I never bother to put any effort into the writing that I do here.
Partially because there is no place for artistic expression here. That isn't why I have this blog.
In my last post, I mentioned that a part of me wanted to return the way I was. Now I wonder what the hell had gotten into me. I was HAPPY.
Something that I've often thought about, but never written anything on, is the concept of multiple personalities.
Not the typical sort that are present in fiction - the comedic character that has an alter ego. Not, even, the more realistic sort that is possessed by an unfortunate few, the sort that I fear I am all to familiar with.

No, this is the sort that I believe everyone has. I've been thinking about them for many years, developing my opinions on them.
Now, I'm beyond what I was when I wrote that post, and beyond, too, myself from several months ago. It was after a stressful time - the first term of year 12. The two week break had proven to be a godsend.
I first had the thought (for I remember it well), when I was on a bus. It was on the way back from Labertouche, almost three years ago. The place no longer exists, burnt into oblivion by the fires of Black Saturday, but it continues in people's memories.
I was listening to music. This particular song was one that I'd listened to on repeat for approximately a week, several months before that bus ride.
Listening to that song revived, completely, the feelings I had that week.
It was not an exceptional week, no different to any other. And yet, the feelings that I had rekindled were completely foreign to the ones that I had at that moment. Nothing had changed for me, save for the passage of a few short months.
Now, school has started back up again. Somehow, it's different this time. I'm not sure if this term is more stressful than the last by a great margin, or if it is I who are less able to deal with this stress.
It was then that the thought occurred to me. I was not the same person on that bus as I was several months ago. Nothing but the passage of time had caused this. I then thought back to other songs, other pieces of music that I had 'bonded' to certain times, and certain emotions. These too, brought to the surface versions of myself that no longer existed. I, as an entity, continued, but these...phases, of me, had long died, only to be revived through song.

But, there were many others, other existences of myself, that had not had a song bounded to them. I found myself, at that time, feeling what could almost be called grief, for those lost versions of myself. I knew that I was still alive, but I had died, many times over.
Just as I shall die, soon, to be replaced by another me. I'm not sure. I was so...sad is the wrong word. Perhaps...empty? Back then. For the past couple of years, I mean.
Inevitably, I found myself thinking on my own existence, at that time. If the past me's had died, then surely I would too, soon perish. I wasn't overly worried. I felt a strange sense of brotherhood between the other me's and myself, and I trusted that any future me's would guide me well. But even still, I was slightly apprehensive. I wrote down the thoughts that I now paraphrase, ending with the sentence "I wonder if I, too, will be able to return, through song."

Several times since then, I've stumbled across the notepad that I used, back then, to jot down my thoughts. I feel sad, not for the loss of that version of myself, but because he was aware of the fact that he would soon die. He actually hoped that he would be able to return to Lachlan Sleight eventually, and yet I know that he never did. He even tried playing a song on repeat for the entire bus trip, trying desperately to bind himself to that song.

I can remember him, but I cannot feel him any longer. He ultimately failed.
It's almost as if, by being happy for a while, now that my peace is gone, and I have been thrust back into the world that drove me to little, I am less capable of objective detachment from myself.
I think I'm just tired.

おもいきり - Resolution, Resignation

I've been feeling...happy lately.
Not actively happy, but comparatively happy.
I had the thought a few months ago that I almost never get really depressed, since I'm pretty much constantly sort of depressed. Constantly melancholy. Now, for the first time in, I think, about 4 years, I'm permanently content.
I've been like this for a few weeks now. It's strange.

I'm not any different as a person, but I'm just...not upset? I spent a large portion of my time alone thinking about serious stuff, and now I think about things that I need to do, or things that need doing.
When I did those quiz things, I always got the answers like "you fit in to no group, you are a loner" or "you are definitely crazy". Now I just get normal answers. It's really strange.

90% of me wants it to stay like this, since I don't think I'm going crazy anymore, but there's 10% that wants to go back to the way I was - it was more interesting.

きみょう - Strange, Curious

On my way home today, two things happened.
One of them interesting, and one of them fascinating, intriguing.

I'll start with the interesting one...

On the train, I stand about 95% of the time. (Trains in Melbourne have far more sitting room than standing room, so I stand near the doors)
The trains in Melbourne have, on each side of the door, a glass barrier between the passageway of the door and the seat.
I was facing one of these glass barriers, and I saw something interesting.
Reflected back at me was not an image of myself as I would see in a mirror, but something subtly, but interestingly, different.
Because the glass was transparent, and there wasn't much difference in the light on either side, the reflection wasn't clear. My reflection was more like what someone who didn't know me or care about me might see me as.
My face was obscured. You could see roughly the outline of my eyes and eyebrows, and occasionally my nose, but no more than that. Not enough to identify me by.
You could see the rough outline of my hair, and that it was dark. Brown? Black?
My clothes were relatively obvious - the formal clothes of a private-school boy.
I had a bag on my right shoulder - or was it my left? I couldn't quite remember how a mirror's reflection works.

Either way, that was pretty interesting.
I would have drawn it, but I can't draw to save myself.


As for the intriguing thing:
After I got off the train, I began the short walk home. It's about 10 minutes, depending on how fast I walk.
Just outside of the station, I saw a group of three boys. I recognised two of them.
Now that we're all grown up, everyone's matured to the point of being friendly towards everyone...people are even civil towards me these days.
Except for these two. The only two boys to not have grown up at all, they are still the idiotic rebellious teens they were three years ago.
I'm quite a paranoid person, so I began to imagine that they followed me. Perhaps to take whatever possessions I had on me (I was listening to my iPhone), or just for the entertainment of hurting me.
Either way, I more or less resigned to having all of my stuff taken and myself beaten.
I began to imagine what it might be like.
The first hit, dull, unrealised at first, but slowly beginning to sting. A broken tooth, perhaps, the taste of blood. I spit out both and barely have time to turn back before the second punch. This one knocks me down. I don't have time to put my arms underneath me, and my face hits the pavement with more force than it did the fist. I feel several more teeth breaking, and feel my nose bending to an uncomfortable angle. The pain is worse, now, spreading all through my face in drawn out throbs, along with the sharp pain in my mouth, my tongue and my nose that keeps me from speaking. Warm blood flows from my nose, and I resist the urge to lick it from my top lip as I would water, for fear of further injuring my teeth. The idle thought that my parents spent a fair bit of money correcting my overbite and misaligned teeth with braces and retainers over the past several years flits through my head, before I look up at the trio standing over me.
Some words, I don't quite hear them, and they turn away.
I grab one of the ankles. I realise that I'm smiling.
The one who's ankle I am holding shakes me off, and kicks me in the ribs.
Now I feel the pain in more than just one place.
I would have imagined it to stop hurting after a while, but after the second kick, I realise that the pain will only get worse and worse. I imagine my rib cracking and a razor-sharp fragment piercing my lung, but my breathing doesn't change.
I'm laughing now, and, after a brief look between each other, the group begins to reign down blows upon my still-prone figure.
I feel a rib breaking, and then another.
A nerve is pinched in between a break in my arm, and I cry out in pain, spraying blood onto the pavement which I am face-down upon.
I still laugh. I try and get up, and a horrible cracking noise comes from somewhere. I collapse again.
Laughing still, blood flowing from my mouth, I laugh as I try desperately to grab them somehow, to somehow share the pain that I feel...

That was when I snapped back to reality, and I realise that, although my step hadn't faltered, I had on my face a horrible smile. Most people have had expressions on their face that they can get an idea about the appearance of, just by how it feels to be wearing the face. I had a general idea about the smile that I had, about the crazed eyes that still were half glazed over. The unnatural smile that pulled back my lips into what was more a horrified grimace than anything else.
More intriguing still, I found that I couldn't wipe the smile off my face. I got a very strange look from someone who walked past me, but it took about 5 minutes for me to finally wipe that expression off my face.

I just thought it was interesting...it was probably the first time that I've adopted such a strange expression without realising it.
All from the result of a strange train of thought I was having.

Come to think of it, I haven't actually tried looking in the mirror yet...I wonder if I can reproduce it.

くらやみ - The Dark

Something you may not have known about me - I'm scared of darkness.
I avoid saying 'scared of the dark' because it sounds juvenile, and I've long since moved beyond the fear that most children have of the dark. Now it's developed into a more mature fear, which is no better I guess. =_=

Anyway, I was just playing piano before, and it was pretty dark. I was playing a pretty speedy nocturne, and it's hard enough that I totally mess it up unless I concentrate really hard.
The wind started to blow, and a variety of night-noises came about.
I'm still playing this nocturne, and I get the sudden, certain feeling, that something is behind me, watching me play.
I don't stop - I can't stop. I love this piece, and I find it impossible to stop playing.
The night sounds grow louder, and I grow more and more horrified by what lies behind me. I cannot tear my eyes from the sheet music in front of me, afraid of losing my place, but I wish more than anything that I could look behind me, just to reassure myself that there is nothing there.
The piece grows faster and louder, and the night grows faster and louder to match.
As the piece reaches its climax, so too does my horror, and finally I finish, whirling around, to see nothing but the evaporation of my irrational fears.

Now, I'm not into hallucinogenic drugs, so I can't really say with much authority what is 'trippy' or not, but that was one of the most fucked up things I have ever done in my life.
It was a direct clash of two of the most irrational things about myself - a passion for music, and the irrational fears that haunt my mind.
They fought furiously for supremacy within my head at the same time as the epicness of the piece I played whirled around my senses.

せい - Life, True (logical), System, 10 ^ 40

I was talking to somebody yesterday.
They remarked, almost offhandedly, that "Life is difficult".
I thought about it. At the time, I didn't really say anything, but I thought about it a bit later on.

I disagree. 'Life' is very easy.
...
I just stopped typing for a few seconds, and did absolutely nothing. I was alive. Living. It was remarkably easy. I didn't even need to do anything different, and I was living. If anything is difficult, then death, or the absence of life, is the difficult thing. Those who are being sent to die, or who are told that they have only a few months left to live, it is they who find life relatively inconsequential. Their death consumes them, and it is the most difficult thing they have ever, or will ever have to do.

But I don't think that's what my conversant was talking about.
I believe that they were talking about the life which we all consider to be 'normal'. A state where we aren't thinking about our emotions, our troubles, and are simply existing. We tend not to notice when we are in this state, because, by its very nature, it does not allow for such thoughts. I like to think that this state is simple happiness. Not joy, or gladness, but simple contentment.
This is what I think was being referred to as difficult. A state of contentment.
Truly, it is certainly something that is difficult to come by. If there is anything wrong, anything that occupies our thoughts, that state vanishes like tendrils of incensed smoke upon a breeze.

I need some sort of fume-cabinet.

Then I'll be content.

ぎせい - Sacrifice, Perjury, Imitation, Bluff

I don't know.
Am I doing the right thing?

The most important thing is that she's OK, right?
Even if I end up being nowhere, so long as she's somewhere.

Even if...



Fuck.








FUCK.
I hate swearing.

おもい - Mind, Feelings

It is usually when I am alone that I have time to think. When I am making the short walk between the train-station and my home, or in the quiet, lonely hours of the night when I drift in and out of sleep, already beginning to prepare mentally for the day that lies beyond the abyss that awaits me, and sometimes it is when I am with other people, but I am separated from them in a way that I do not understand, but do not find in the least bit perplexing. It is in these times that I have the time to think, and as such, it is in these times that I have the capacity to enter sanctuary.
I say ‘sanctuary’ because I do not have any other word for that place. It is not so much a sanctuary as an intermission, a place of limbo in which there is nothing but the memory of the moments preceding it, and apprehension for the moments that it will be succeeded by. It is a place of blatant, but accepted, contradictions, and yet it is the one place that is truly honest.
Despite my describing sanctuary as a place, a physical location, I feel it would be more correct to say that it is an impression, an illusion, perhaps, of a place that I wish would exist, as if wishing so could perhaps bring about the painfully impossible. I think these things for some time, and to my constant bewilderment, the blatantly impossible occurs, and I am left thinking just how I could have been so foolish as to have doubted for an instant the existence of my sanctuary.
I step within myself and imagine casting my gaze about, for the sake of this account, so that I will not return to the origins of this idea with naught but a piece of paper, pure white and unsullied by my necessitated ramblings, and despite nothing truly existing in that place, I can see both nothing and everything at once, as though peering around an infinitely familiar place with my eyes closed – nothing can be seen, but the knowledge of its existence makes the obscurity unfold before clarity. It is the same here, in that while I can see nothing as such, I am familiar with everything that could exist before my eyes, and so, everything does.
It is only after several moments of this token gesture that I realise that I am not alone within my sanctuary. I do not attempt to look around for my companion, for my heart was never truly in such a gesture from the beginning, as I believe it futile. However, I can feel a presence, much in the way that one feels a cloud passing over the sun even when they are in the shade to begin with.
I do not speak, for I have no breath, nor do I try to communicate in any way. I suspect that even if I were able to take physical action, I would not, for my eyes would be wide with fear and my heart pounding with anticipation of the chase.
This goes on for a while, my fruitless musings, and my companion’s silent witness, until I begin to note that my companion has begun motion, and I imagine my jaw tightening and my hands clenching into fists.
I imagine a hand being placed on my shoulder, and I feel suddenly at ease, as one might as an infant, with the strong, sure hand of a father reassuringly placed across one’s shoulders, for such a thing is possible when one is young and small.
I imagine reassuring words spoken confidently into my ear, in my own voice, despite my inability to speak. I note that amongst the reassuring words are suggestions supported by objective madness, and I imagine capturing a brief glimpse of my companion. Like the rest of my sanctuary, the face I picture is both no face and every face. I imagine being slightly frustrated at my inability to identify who it is I have brought here, but my fancies disperse upon a non-existent wind.
For the first time, I feel truly afraid, and I imagine myself leaving my sanctuary, if for no other reason than to be able to rest my feet on ground that someone else crafted. But my companion holds me to himself, in an embrace that chills me in a way far deeper than any environment I could imagine myself being in.
I imagine all sorts of things to keep me separated from the one I brought into my sanctuary, but none of it is real, and so none of it has any effect save for giving me peace of mind for the briefest of instants, before my relief is torn down along with my false protection.
It is almost impossible to describe why it is that I fear that entity within myself, for everything I imagine it saying it logical, and has grounds in reality. Despite this, what I have learned in reality itself tells me that I must not listen to my inner voice and that it leads to a darkened path down which I must never follow.
And it is only then that I realise that that companion within my sanctuary is my sanctuary itself, in a way, and that it exists only because I willed it to be so. I recoil from such thoughts, but they cling to me much in the way that my sanctuary does.
And despite my best efforts, I now realise that it is too late for me to ignore my sanctuary, or to leave it behind, for it speaks truth and objectivity, and to ignore it is to lead myself down that shaded path.
And it is after all this that I come to a sudden, jolting realisation that sends waves of nausea through me. Despite my fear and despite everything, my sanctuary and its presence are in themselves me, and I understand that everything that I imagined them saying and doing was nothing but that itself – my imaginings.
And after these realisations comes one, final, crushing blow, and that is the acceptance of my insanity.

We had to write an essay for school, there were a bunch of options, I went for "In the style of Alistair MacLeod, describe the environment of your inner state"

めいかい - Clarity, The Realm of the Dead

People often mention, in relation to those losing their sanity, moments of "Clarity".
They mention these moments as positives, as signs of improvement, or, if nothing else, moments where mental deterioration isn't so bad.

I find it to be quite the opposite.
How can I have clarity if there is nothing that opposes that clarity?
Things aren't constant. It isn't always the same. My sanity waxes and wanes, it comes and it goes.
It is my rational thought that leads me down the path of anarchy.

If it is rational thought that leads me into irrationality, then what can I do but to go down that darkened path?